THE FRONT ROW WITH MARK NELKE: Sunday, Dec. 18, 2016

So if the University of Minnesota had gone through with its boycott of the bowl game it is scheduled to play in on Dec. 27, would anybody really have noticed?

OK, maybe Washington State and its fans would notice, seeing as that’s who the Cougars are scheduled to play in the Holiday Bowl in San Diego.

Then again, the way the Cougars have shredded many of the defenses they have faced this year — at least until Colorado and the Huskies showed up on the other side of the ball — it was almost like there was not a defense out there anyway.

But other than that ...

ADMIT IT, how many people knew, before a couple Sundays ago, Minnesota fielded a college football team?

True, cable and satellite TV is abundant these days, and there’s this streaming thing on the internet.

The Gophers have played in four straight bowl games, but mostly because someone has to these days. The majority of their bowl appearances have come since 1999, when the bowl system started to morph into “No Team Left Behind.”

In their defense, the Gophers did play in the Rose Bowl a couple of times — 55 and 56 seasons ago.

Certainly you were glued to the television last year for the Quick Lane Bowl, which saw Minnesota beat Central Michigan 21-14 on Dec. 28 at Ford Field in Detroit to snap a seven-game bowl losing streak you certainly had no idea the Gophers were on.

Perhaps you remember the 1999 and 2003 Sun Bowl games, which pitted Minnesota vs. Oregon. The Ducks won the first one, and the Gophers prevailed four years later.

Between 1882, when the football program was established at Minnesota, and 1998, the Gophers played in a total of five bowl games.

Not that Washington State has a rich bowl history either. This is the Cougars’ third straight bowl game, and fourth in the last five seasons, but before that, you could remember each one, they were so rare. They went 10 years between bowl trips (2003-13), which is hard to do in major college football, for the aforementioned reasons.

And, like the Gophers, the Cougs have had their issues off the field this season — though obviously not to this degree — but at least they plan to show up for the bowl game.

MENTION MINNESOTA football and most automatically think of the Vikings. Heck, for a long time the Gophers played their home games on the Vikings’ home field.

The Minnesota players — the college ones, not the professional ones — thought they had a good reason to threaten a boycott of the game. But, for reasons mentioned before, Minnesota football doesn’t carry much clout. If the Gophers hadn’t shown up, word is Northern Illinois would have been Next Team Up. Northern Illinois, which hasn’t played since Nov. 25, and whose players presumably haven’t practiced or worked out much since then, not to mention have likely scattered throughout the country for the holidays.

(This just in — Northern Illinois just got scored on again by Boise State in last year’s Poinsettia Bowl.)

Had Minnesota opted to stay home, perhaps the Sun Belt could have thrown together an all-star team, as five of its six bowl-bound teams will have played their bowl games by then.

If not, perhaps Idaho, five days removed from its first bowl game in seven seasons, might have been interested in a rematch with the Cougs.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.